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Alex J., Solicitor

Category: Law

Satisfied Customers: 3840

Experience: Solicitors 2 years plus PQE

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Hello
After chasing payment from a development manager for

Customer Question

Hello

After chasing payment from a development manager for over 2 months below is a letter he sent me. We do commercial cleaning for the management company and also residential cleaning for their residents. This is not the first time the development manager has imposed trade restrictions on us. My company has not done anything unlawful and infact have good feedback for all the work carried out on the development. I would like your advice on what I can do next because I feel I have been targeted unfairly.

Letter:

"Payment should be with you on next pay run in two weeks.

Accounts have been instructed to close your account down, thereafter.

Under no circumstances are any of my staff to be approached by you or your staff from Total Plus on Virginia Quay premises.

Should we see any more interference or personnel from you or your staff on Virginia Quay Development we will have no alternative but call the authorities to assist.

To work on a development you are registered as a preferred contractor which I gained last year 2013. This means all planned work or responsive work is given to you after they issue a job order. This development started working for the company in February 2014 and from the day he started he was always trying to find out how we had been approved to be on the contractors list. He even accused his deputy ( he has worked for this company for 10years) of taking bribes from us contractors and whether the deputy had followed procedure in applying for us to be on the preferred contractor list.

My company has not done anything wrong and we have serviced this development for 4 years. He has targeted a few other contractors fir the same issue and I feel he wants to get rid of us because of our relationship with the deputy manager.

There is no term to it and if you have to be removed you receive a letter from head office detailing the reasons you are being removed from the list. This company owns over 100 developments so you can get job orders from any of them. This development manager is for 1 development only and he has written to the procurement team to remove us without anything wrong from our part. I have proof of all our communications with him which include excellent feedback for the work we had done for him. Its only when we chased our money, for a job he tried to get for free that all this happened

Yes there are about 4 others above him who operate from head office and yes I would like to work for other developments. We do not have any reason to be reported to the police and this is the first we heard of it. My plan thus weekend is to write to the head of operations but I am very upset about how his comments can have an impact on my company image and also my relationship with the rest of the company after they read what he had written. Do I not have any rights to protect my company image ?

At the moment it is just a private correspondence between the two of you. Potentially if he starts making accusations to third parties it would be defamation and you could potentially sue him and/or the company he works for.

As a starting point, instead of making a complaint why don't you contact one his seniors and say that you are saddened that the relationship has come to an end and wonder what has been done to cause such a souring of relationships. Then forward the message he sent to you with the threats to report you to the police. What I am suggesting is do not make it out to seem like a complaint just ask the question and give the superiors in the company the rope to hang this individual so to speak.

If it then transpires that they/he have been making false allegations about your company to other people then you can consider suing.

Unfortunately if it is genuinely the case that they do not want to work with you anymore then there is not too much you can do. However if you go in all guns blazing against this individual you are less likely to successfully salvage the relationship.

Hi Aj, he has cc'd three other parties including the policeman of the area and the procurement team at head office and his deputy . The email I sent you was not a private conversation it includes third parties. I know for a fact I have done nothing wrong because all the correspondence I have I can forward to you.

A few months back he held back paying my money for 2 jobs that we had done because his deputy had signed them off on a work order before he started the job until his boss intervened and that's when payment was made. This is now the third payment and I have been chasing it for 2 months and this is how it has brought all of this.

I would like to sue him for defamation as you said because there is no reason for his actions, even if it means taking on the company because of his actions.

Yes the email came from his work address. I don't understand why my trade practice should be totally barred especially for the private clients we clean for. This cannot be legal and making false accusations to the police is malicious and a libel case quite clearly.

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